Friday, January 9, 2015

The Sex Life of the Sphink

This post was published for the first time in 2005 and it is reproduced here with some minor modifications. I must admit that I had some fun in writing it!

THE SEX LIFE OF THE SPHINX

As monsters go, the Sphinx is a rather nasty one due to her habit of
devouring those unfortunates who can't solve her riddles. However, she also
seems to have a sexuality of her own, shown by her prominent female breasts
that we can see in most modern images. In our times, the sex life of the Sphinx
remains a mystery but, as for what song the Sirens sang, “not beyond all
conjecture” It may turn out that the breasts of the Sphinx, far from being an
iconographic accident, are the key to the entire myth. (Image courtesy of Ray D. Pounds II)

There are two versions
of the Sphinx: male and female, most commonly found in ancient Egypt and Greece. The male (Egyptian) sphinx is stately and solemn,
not very sexy. The female (Greek) one, instead, has a sex appeal that you can't
ignore. Which other half-human creature in mythology is so often associated
with naked breasts? Mermaids, harpies, medusas, chimeras, sirens-- they are
all females and, occasionally, they are shown sporting human breasts (and, in
the case of Hollywood mermaids, bras as well). But the image that we normally have
in mind of the Sphinx is clear and consistent: she has these prominent female
breasts and, almost always, no bra.

Where does
this busty image of the Sphinx come from? For an answer, we must examine the
origins of a myth that has been with us for a long time; millennia. Ancient
images of winged lions are common all over the Mediterranean and, sometimes,
the lion is associated with a Goddess riding it. When the lion’s head is human,
we call the creature a sphinx. Sometimes we can recognize the creature as a
male sphinx, and sometimes as a female one. But, even in the latter case, we
don’t normally see human breasts in these very ancient images.

From Minoan times, back to the 2nd
Millennium BC, all the way to classical Greece, we have plenty of paintings or sculptures
of sphinxes of all shapes and sizes. Breasts, however, just aren’t there. As
an example, on the right we see a Greek sphinx from the Delphi museum (6th
Century BC). The same we can
say for ancient text sources; we have several mentions of the Sphinx, from Hesiod,
(probably 9th Century BC) to Sophocles (5th Century BC)
and onwards. It is often said that the creature is female but breasts are never
mentioned.

Apparently, however,
the image of the Sphinx evolved in time. During the classical Greek, and later Roman,
period, breasts started to appear, associated with sphinxes. In some images, we
see rows of breasts under the belly, as proper for a lioness, as we see in the image on the
left - found on the web (unfortunately without a source attribution), is an example. It is a curious image, almost a comic book one. As befits a
Sphinx, this one is literate, she is reading something. She has several breasts
a row, but they go all the way to the front of the chest, in a position where
no four-legged creature has breasts. And
these breasts are plump and nearly spherical, not like animal breasts; more
like human female breasts.

In time, it seems that the Classical image of the sphinx evolved in a form that showed just a couple of human-sized breasts. Here, we see a Sphinx (ca. 400 BC) said to have belonged to the
private collection of Sigmund Freud himself.

With the decline of the classical world, the Sphinx theme
declined from the visual arts, although it never disappeared. Medieval artists loved fantastic
beasts, but they didn't seem to be especially interested in sphinxes. However,
with the late Renaissance, the classical world burst out again on the art scene
and, with it, breasted sphinxes came back with a vengeance. This image on the left, by the
Italian mannerist painter Perino del Vaga (ca. 1500-1547) gives us some idea of
how things had changed. This sphinx is almost aerodynamic; it almost looks like one of those
Detroit cars of the 1960s, (maybe those prominent car bumpers of the time had a
sexual meaning!) And, considering the frontal weight, one wonders whether this
creature would be able to walk without falling on her… er… face.

With the late
Renaissance and early post-Renaissance, there also came a wave of erotic interest
in female breasts that had been unknown before. In the 17th Century,
women started wearing corsets, to sport deep décolletages, and to flaunt their
cleavages to men. Nobody seem to know for sure what caused this change in
fashion and in attitudes, but sphinxes seem to have been affected by this
evolution, too. From then on, no artist would think to draw or paint a breastless
Sphinx.

During the “Neoclassical period”, from late 17th Century onward, female sphinxes
became a commonplace decorative element in gardens all over Europe and were referred
to as the “French Sphinx”. Sometimes, these creatures don’t look very sensual,
at least to our modern eyes. Their body is heavy, more like that of a cow than that
of a beast of prey. Their posture is solemn, and their hairdo often a funny mix
of what may have been the fashion of the time and what the artist thought it
should have been in ancient Greece or in Egypt. But their breasts carry a
message: no more the virginal breasts of later Greek art, but full breasts of a
mature woman.

The eroticism of the Sphinx in art went up of a couple of
notches with the 1800's. The first to start pushing things in this
direction was the French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Ingres
painted three images of Oedipus and the Sphinx, the last one in 1864. The one
on the left was painted in 1825. In all these images, the Sphinx is half-hidden
in shadows, but her human breasts are in full light. Note Oedipus’s posture,
the height of his face, the position of his hand and finger. All these elements
emphasize the Sphinx’s breasts as the central theme of the whole
painting.

In the 19th century, the
Sphinx, became a favorite theme of
the Symbolist school. The Symbolists
tended to eroticize everything classical, and the sensual side of the Sphinx –
her breasts – was something that they didn’t miss. Their attitude may have had
something to do with the moral attitudes of the time. Many
Symbolists were English and they lived in Victorian England. So, they tended to
react as they could to the official prudery of their times: they couldn't paint naked women, but they could explore the anatomical features of a non-human creature and eroticize them at will. Gustave Moreau
(1826-1898) was one of the Symbolists who explored the Sphinx theme in detail.
His sphinxes are always shown as human-breasted and strongly sensual.

Some of Moreau’s Sphinxes

In time, the sensuality
of the Sphinx literally exploded on the
canvas of the artists. On the right, you an see an interpretation by the Belgian
symbolist Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) in a 1896 painting that he entitled
“Caresses”. Here, we see how sensual a Sphinx can be, even without prominent human breasts. She is a leopardess, tenderly embracing an ephebic Oedipus. Their expression, their posture, are
all details that convey the impression of a seductress, happy with her
conquest.

But it was Franz Von Stuck (1863-1928) who best
captured the Sphinx's sensuality with this 1895 painting. No trace of lions or
leopards, here, no wings and no serpent’s tail. Yet, Von Stuck had no need to
write “Sphinx” on the top of his painting to tell us what he was showing. It is perfectly clear that we
are looking at the Sphinx, divine seductress. She has gone full cycle, from
lioness to woman. She has large eyes, a sensual mouth, well rounded buttocks and, of course, well formed breasts. She is relaxed, dominant, self-assured, and in full flower. Under the Sphinx, we see the parable of human life. In this composition, the Sphinx takes on her proper role of
Goddess, dominating the creatures of the Earth.

The
fascination of the symbolists with the Sphinx’s myth lasted for about a century
and gave us many splendid images. In time, the theme was explored and re-interpreted
over and over. In our times, the
number of images of the Sphinx is prodigious and the number of
variations is beyond all possible attempts of classification. One thing that
didn't change, however, was the idea of the “lioness with human breasts.” Sometimes
breasts are shown in full, sometimes just hinted at, but they are always there.
Here are some examples.

At this point, we may ask
ourselves what is the whole idea about. Why is the Sphinx always endowed
with these prominent frontal objects? Surely, they are not to be intended as
overdeveloped flying muscles (as Roy D. Pounds suggested). Several
generations of artists couldn’t just have been involved with a mere decorative
element, a detail of no significance. These breasts must mean something and the
artists who have shown them so often seem to have been able to catch an aspect
of the myth that may difficult or impossible to express in words.

From the early studies of Desmond Morris
(“the naked ape”, 1967), anthropologists have noted that the shape of human
breasts is much different from that of four-legged animals. The idea that has
been proposed is that human breasts carry a visual meaning immediate
for creatures like us, who interact with each other by standing in front of one
another. It may be that prominent breasts signify the health of a woman, her
sexual status, her ability of raising children, or something else. In any case,
they may be a sexual message aimed at males.

This attitude has genetic origins, but it is surely
mediated by cultural factors. We know that the modern Western erotic interest
in female breasts is not necessarily shared by other cultures, ancient of
contemporary. But our attitude is not unique in human history. For instance, in
the sophisticated and complex Minoan art of the second millennium BC, women are
shown with exposed, pear-shaped breasts. These Minoan ladies wouldn’t
be out of place on the pages of the modern “Playboy” magazine. (Image on the
right, from J. Campbell’s “The Masks of God”).

However, the attitude of the Classical world toward female breasts was completely different. In Greek, and in later Roman art, naked female breasts are
not uncommon, but they don’t seem to carry a strong sexual message. Breasts appear
mainly when there was a logical reason for a woman to be shown naked.
That was the case of amazons and athletes, for instance. In other cases, a
woman could be caught fully undressed while bathing, but these images were not centered on breasts as an erotic element. Or, an exposed
breast could be a sign of distress. This seems to be the case of the piece of
statuary known as the “Barberini Suppliant,” that may represent the rape of
Cassandra after the fall of Troy. There are other examples of this kind.

A literary glimpse of ancient attitudes towards
breasts comes from Pseudo-Lucian’s “Amores”
(probably 2nd Century AD). Here, two friends discuss the relative
merits of straight and gay love as they pause to admire the statue of Venus in
Cnidos. Many facets of human sexuality are explored in considerable detail in
this ancient text, but women’s breasts are never mentioned as an object of
erotic interest. Even the one of the two characters who expounds straight sex doesn’t seem
to find the naked breasts of the goddess particularly exciting. When breasts
are mentioned, the sense is much different. So, we are told (41) that women
would wear,

“.. thin veils that pass for clothes so as
to excuse their apparent nakedness. But everything inside these can be
distinguished more clearly than their faces except for their hideously
prominent breasts, which they always carry about bound like prisoners.”

Yet, we can say that the ancient Greeks were not indifferent
to female breasts, they just saw them differently. We may find a hint of what was
their attitude in one of the few surviving fragments of the “Little Iliad”
(written a couple of centuries after Homer’s Iliad). Here we read that,
after the fall of Troy, Menelaus was ready to kill his wife, Helen, out of revenge. But he
cast away his sword when he caught "a glimpse of her breasts, unclad". In our modern
view, we would see a woman unveiling herself as passing a sexual message. But
we saw that breasts didn’t have a strong erotic meaning for ancient Greeks. So,
in showing to Menelaus her breasts, Helen was sending him a quite different message;
a message of intimacy. In Euripides (5th Century BC), we hear Helen,
captive in Egypt, fondly remembering Menelaus “caressing her breasts”. Breasts
that a Greek woman would normally keep “bound like prisoners, ” but that she
couldn’t keep hiding while in bed with her husband. So, what Helen was saying to
Menelaus with her gesture was, “know who I am: I am your wife.”

In the Iliad, Menelaus was arriving in front of Helen
with his sword still dirty of the blood of Deiphobos, Helen’s second Trojan
husband. In the myth of the Sphinx, Oedipus was arriving in front of the Sphinx
with his sword still dirty of the blood of his father, Laius. These two scenes
are eerily similar and, by showing her breasts, the Sphinx was passing to
Oedipus the same message that Helen was passing to Menelaus, “know who I am”.
When a woman unveils her breasts, she is
revealing an intimate part of herself; she is showing herself for what she is.

The Sphinx was opening herself to Oedipus, showing him
her intimate essence. What this essence was, can be understood from the riddle she asked him, “what
is it that walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs during the day, and
on three legs in the evening?” We all know that the standard answer is “man”. But this is a silly answer to
a riddle which is not a silly one. Think of a different answer: why not “woman”?

This is not just a question of political correctness: think how the life of a
woman is naturally divided into three periods: virgin, mother, and crone. It is
a much sharper subdivision than anything that we can relate to a man. And this
simple reversal of roles opens up a whole universe. If the riddle hints at the
ages of a woman, what the Sphinx was showing to Oedipus was a vision of the
triple essence of the Moon Goddess. The moon can be waxing, full, and waning.
The Sphinx herself, being of divine nature, had a triple shape: woman, bird, and
lioness. These three shapes are the three elements of the female essence: the
lion (the strength of a virgin), breasts (motherhood of a mature woman) and
wings (the link with the sky: the wisdom of an old woman). (Image on the right,
front cover of R. Graves’s “The White Goddess”)

So, Oedipus was presented with a vision of the Female Deity.
The Sphinx was offering him nothing less than a sacred initiation to the
Goddess’s mystery. As a characteristic of initiations, he would be symbolically
“devoured” by the Sphinx, and he would experience death and rebirth. But Oedipus couldn’t
understand what was being offered to him. He gave a silly answer, refusing the Sphinx’s offer. Later in the
story, Oedipus’s curse was to become blind, but he had started out blind. Blind
to the beauty and the power of the triple goddess. Some say that Oedipus
actually killed the Sphinx, some that he didn’t touch her, she killed herself.
It doesn’t matter; Oedipus’s blindness gave him the power of destroying
everything and everyone he came in contact with. When meeting the Sphinx, he had
already killed his father and, later on, he would cause the death of Jocasta,
his mother and bride. Later still, the death of his daughter Antigone and of
his sons was, again indirectly, caused by Oedipus’s actions.

Men are cursed with the power of giving death. Women,
instead, have the power of giving life. This is the ultimate meaning of the
Sphinx’s breasts. It doesn’t matter if breasts are seen as erotic objects (as they
are to us) or as tokens of intimacy between husband and wife (as they were for
ancients Greeks). Breasts remain the source of life’s nourishment, the awesome
power of the Goddess: Inanna the moon goddess, Tiamat the dragoness, Eurynome,
who created the whole universe with her dance.

In our times, the myth of the Sphinx is emerging from
the depth of the past millennia to confront us again with Oedipus’s dilemma. The
Sphinx is bringing to us a message that goes to the heart of what means to be
human, to our relation with everything which is alive around us on this planet.
As a Goddess, she is carrying with herself the power of creation and of
destruction at the same time. Creation and destruction are the laws of the
universe, which will eventually devour us all, no matter what silly answers, in
our blindness, we think we can give to its riddles.

The author is grateful to ms. Alison Frank for her comments on this
manuscript. All the images on this page are believed by the author to be in the
public domain or to be usable according to the “fair use” clause of current
copyright laws. If you own one of these images, write me to
have it removed or to receive proper credit. This text may be freely cited and
reproduced, mentioning the source is appreciated! Thanks.